Mohamed Aden has one thing that he still wants to accomplish in his high school soccer career.

Aden, a senior and four-year varsity starter, along with the rest of the St. Cloud Tech boys soccer team have never played in the state tournament.

This year they hope to change that.

The last time the Tigers reached the state tournament was in 2008, the lone boys soccer state appearance in the school’s history.

The aim for this year’s team, is to add a second state appearance to that list.

“State is somewhere that we all want to reach,” Aden said. “We are really focused this season to do that, and we have one goal: win.”

That goal fell one game short a season ago, when Tech lost 1-0 to Anoka in the Section 8-2A championship game. Anoka went on to win the Class 2A state title, beating Wayzata 2-1 in a shootout.

“Last year was very disappointing for us and we are hoping to go farther than that this year,” Aden said. “Anoka is not in our section anymore (moving to Section 7-2A), so it that will be good for us.

“Overall, we are just a much better team this year than we were last year.”

Tech coach Nantha Viswanathan thinks that his team is ready and willing to play any team in the state.

“Our ultimate goal is that we want to make it to state,” he said. “We feel very confident with the players that we have and we are striving for that goal.

“We feel that we could take on a Twin Cities team and make it a good game.”

Young but experienced roster

Tech is off to a hot start to the season, and a lot of that early success has to deal with the experience on the roster.

“We have a lot of good young players and just a lot of players returning from last year,” Aden said. “That has definitely helped us so far.”

Tech, which had four starters and seven players total graduate a season ago, has five seniors on this years team.

“We have a lot of juniors and sophomores that are on the squad, most of which have been starters on varsity,” Viswanathan said. “It gives us a lot of depth and it’s great knowing that our bench is really deep. We are able to sub in players but still able to play at 120 percent.”

Viswanathan, who is in his eighth season at the helm of the Tigers, thinks that this team is one of the best that he has coached at Tech.

“We have a diverse and knowledgeable group this year. Every kid works great with each other, and it is all about teamwork,” he said. “We all wear the same black and orange jersey that says ‘Tech’ on it. We are one team.”

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Tough conference

Tech, St. Cloud Apollo and Willmar are amongst the teams that are favorites to be atop the Central Lakes Conference this season, with Rocori, Sartell and Alexandria not far behind.

“I think that the top team in the conference is Apollo, with Willmar and us right there with them, but I think that Apollo is the main competitor,” Viswanathan said. “It is always good to play a state-caliber team like Apollo.”

For Aden, the Central Lakes competition is something that is of main focus for him at this point in the season.

“We want to take everything game-by-game,” he said. “We want to win the CLC, then go deeper in the playoffs. We have to worry about the smaller goals before we can reach our biggest goal.”

Cross-town rivalry

In an always anticipated match, Tech and long-time rival Apollo are set to face-off this week.

The two teams play at 7 p.m. Thursday at Apollo High School.

This match won’t be like previous years, however.

Apollo, which is ranked No. 1 in Class A, hired Abdikhani Omar Mohamed to be its boys head coach before the season, replacing Ganard Orionzi.

Mohamed is no stranger to the players who will be playing on both teams in the game. He has spent the past six years coaching summer league and travel soccer teams in St. Cloud, which included numerous soccer players from the area, like Aden.

“I played for (Mohamed) for three years on the travel and summer soccer team in St. Cloud, so it will be very intense,” Aden said. “I have a lot of friends at Apollo and it will be my first time playing against all of them.”

Aden knows that it won’t be an easy task to take on the Eagles, but thinks that the Tigers have a good chance to come out with a win.

“It’s going to be a very close and a very tough game. It always is,” he said. “However, I think that we will win it 2-1. I’m looking forward to it.”

Junior Luke Dorn, a two-year starter with the Tigers, has high expectations for his team, predicting that they will make a strong run to the state tournament. But before that can happen, they have Apollo to worry about Thursday night.

“We are cross-town rivals and it is always a good game when we both play each other,” he said. “They made it to state last year and we didn’t, but we have a stronger team this year. In the end, it will be Tech on top, that’s all I have to say.”